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Re: Please report upfront fee scammers to Attorney General .... there's power in numbers ... Florida has begun

A federal indictment calls it "pitching heat" - telling "blatant lies" on the phone to scam fees out of people who think there is a real buyer for their time-share properties. Now some national heat is coming down on three Palm Beach County pitchers. Federal grand jurors in East St. Louis, Ill., indicted Darnell Disroe, 38, and Michael Lentine, 32, of Boynton Beach and Michael Starace, 42, of Lantana on Wednesday. Boynton Beach police and U.S. postal inspectors cooperated in an investigation that found more than 600 victims were bilked for more than $1.3 million in 46 states and Canada. Real Timeshare Marketing asked time-share condo owners to pay thousands of dollars for costs associated with phony pending sales, according to an unsealed indictment. Despite collecting $1.3 million in fees between Dec. 1 and April 28, the company was not instrumental in selling a single time-share interest, federal officials said. The men could not be reached for comment. A company employee who answered the phone Thursday said she would leave a message for them. Similar ploys have become the top complaint to a state fraud hot line, surpassing mortgage scams, and involving more than 10,000 complaints against scores of companies. Palm Beach County has been a hotbed for the business, with 10 of 17 companies subpoenaed by the Florida Attorney General's Office in March based in the county. Fines, settlements and pending civil charges at the state and local level have addressed some of the complaints. This time, federal authorities are pursuing charges of mail fraud and other offenses that carry up to 25 years in prison or fines up to $250,000 per count. Among others, an Illinois customer paid $1,886 after an agent for Real Timeshare Marketing promised someone wanted to buy the customer's time-share interest for more than $20,000, but the sale never happened, authorities said. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Illinois announced the charges. The men indicted have more than 20 arrests between them. Disroe has been arrested three times since 2005 on charges including drug possession and fraud, receiving probation in two cases, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records. Lentine, whose occupation is listed as "detail cars" in arrest records, has been apprehended six times, most recently for shoplifting in 2008, but that charge was not prosecuted, records show. Starace, listed as a bartender in FDLE records, has 12 arrests, one of which resulted in a short jail stint on drug charges in 2004. Researcher Niels Heimericks contributed to this story.